In the 11 minutes or so that it will take you to read this article, one woman or girl will be killed somewhere in the world by someone in her own family who was supposed to love her. In the past year, more than one in every ten women and girls aged 15–49 was subjected to sexual and/or physical violence by an intimate partner.
These are just two of the many shocking statistics about the global scourge that is gender-based violence, and behind every statistic are countless friends and family members whose lives will never be the same.
The theme of this year’s 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, which began on the 25 November, is a plea to invest in preventing violence against women and girls and hold our governments to account. This appeal follows the United Nations’ (UN) recent admission that the Sustainable Development Goal of eliminating all forms of violence against women and girls by 2030 is unlikely to be met. While there are signs that rates of gender-based violence are falling, with those of lifetime physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence dropping by 31 per cent globally between 2000 and 2018, any preventable deaths are too many, and the lasting trauma inflicted on women and children has severe consequences and costs. Further, the science on transformations tells us that following the emergence phase, when innovation, piloting and the application of new knowledge takes place, the next step to achieving successful transformations is accelerating change. This requires decisive action by governments, investment in infrastructure and capabilities, and the suppression of resistance and barriers to reform.
In Australia, as in other parts of the world, community attitudes to violence against women have slowly improved, and the issue has generally been high on the political agenda. Researchers from across disciplines, governments of all political persuasions, and community and private-sector organisations are coming together to address gender-based violence through innovative partnerships such as the Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. This momentum is primarily thanks to the advocacy work of victim-survivors and their loved ones, who have shone a light on what had previously been seen as a private issue and demanded change. Politicians and policy makers have, over time, recognised the value of engaging victim-survivors in developing policy and service reforms.
However, recently published findings from my PhD research found that the gendered nature of public institutions, power imbalances and institutional resistance can hamper this approach. This is not to say that victim-survivors should not be engaged in the work of systems reform; far from it. In other areas of public policy, the benefits of end-to-end service-user engagement, including better services and value for money, are increasingly apparent. However, my research findings highlight the need for the changes we want to see to be embedded within our institutions, systems and structures.
My research examined the first three years of a groundbreaking group of victim-survivors established in 2016 to advise the government in the Australian state of Victoria. The Victim Survivors’ Advisory Council (VSAC) was a central component of the government’s multibillion-dollar reform of the family violence system. Similar to subsequent developments in other parts of the world, including the establishment of the Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales and the European Commission Coordinator for victims’ rights, VSAC was designed to give people with lived experience of family violence a voice and ensure they were consulted on system reforms.
My interviews with policy makers and the victim-survivor Chair of VSAC, together with an analysis of government and independent reports, revealed that without the government’s first changing itself and how it did business, it struggled to provide a safe space for victim-survivors. The research confirmed there are highly gendered formal and informal rules within institutions, particularly powerful, hierarchical public institutions.
While many changes have subsequently been made to VSAC, including the introduction of a Family Violence Lived Experience Strategy, in the first years of its establishment, power imbalances were reinforced through the formal policies and processes of government, as well as through informal norms and stereotypes, such as the ideal/compliant victim. Fortunately, policy makers were determined to ensure that others could learn from their experiences and acknowledged that they struggled to make the policy environment safe for victim-survivors. The government’s interests were often put first, compromising the outcomes that VSAC could deliver.
The research further found that due to political imperatives, VSAC’s establishment was rushed and planning compromised. As a result, policy makers had conflicting views about VSAC’s role, as did victim-survivors, leading to anxiety and distress among both groups. The recruitment of victim-survivors was also hurried, with little clarity regarding criteria. As a result, some victim-survivors had very recently experienced violence and were still experiencing significant trauma, while others’ experiences of violence had been years or even decades earlier. VSAC’s first meeting was called with only 24 hours’ notice provided. The meeting was very formal and reinforced institutional hierarchies. Policy makers admitted that they had underestimated the trauma experienced by victim-survivors and the impact of power imbalances within VSAC and the government. The result was that some victim-survivors felt that they were not listened to or were powerless because they were too emotional or not agreeable/compliant enough, triggering often quite traumatic responses. Because the government had been unprepared for this trauma, the public servants working closely with VSAC ended up providing trauma support, even though they had no training. Finally, the government’s focus on this one small group of victim-survivors was at the expense of the voices of other victim-survivors and compromised the breadth of experiences heard.
The VSAC case study underscores that governments are unaccustomed to sharing power. Despite best intentions, political priorities will often lead to the co-option of victim-survivors whose traumatic personal stories have a power some long for. Policy makers should be encouraged to challenge internal barriers to doing government differently. They need to understand the benefits of doing co-production well, listening to the experiences of the most marginalised, and hearing things they may not want to hear. This includes challenging gendered policies, processes, stereotypes and norms and learning from those with lived experience. Ultimately, the VSAC experience highlights the critical need for institutional reform to accompany policy reform.
The UN has highlighted that without action to end violence against women and girls, gender equality remains out of reach, and half the human race is left behind, compromising our ability to make progress on a range of issues from poverty and economic growth to sustainable cities and communities. According to the UN, what is needed to embed transformations is the institutionalisation of reforms. Put simply, we need to be the change we want to see. To end violence against women and girls requires the transformation of the systems and structures that for so long looked the other way, supported and reinforced gender-based violence. This change must happen now.
To coincide with the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, Lisa and Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety Limited (ANROWS) have launched a guide to co-production with victim-survivors, Towards meaningful engagement: Key findings for survivor co-production of public policy on gender-based violence.
Lisa is a research and teaching associate at Monash University, RMIT University and the University of New South Wales.
Gender-based violence policy reform: Assessing the risks and public value of co-production with survivors by Lisa Wheildon, Asher Flynn, Jacqui True and Abby Wild for the Journal of Gender-Based Violence is available on Bristol University Press Digital here.
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